Since Ben and I have been so busy with weddings and parties and traveling, my kitchen started to feel like a foreign land for a while. I hadn’t cooked a real meal in a very long time, so I was extremely happy on Saturday to finally be able to make something delicious and healthy for me and the mister!
This meal was borne out of both necessity and convenience. We had almost nothing in the house, but we did have some snow peas that really needed to be used in the fridge. And I just happened to have half a pineapple sitting two shelves down. I thought they sounded like a tasty combination, so I decided to run with it and make a stir-fry. As I mentioned, we had almost no food in our cupboards, so I got creative and decided to make homemade teriyaki sauce. It turned out great and made such a satisfying and totally healthy meal! Love.
Ingredients
For the teriyaki sauce:
- 1/4 cup shoyu, tamari, or other soy sauce
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
- 2 tbsp honey
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp grated ginger
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 1/4 cup cold water
(Optional: double these ingredients and make two batches of teriyaki sauce — this makes things super saucy and allows you to stir-fry without using oil!)
For the stir-fry:
- 1 block extra firm tofu, drained and pressed (or do what I did and buy the pre-pressed kind!)
- 1/2 lb fresh snow peas
- 1/2 fresh pineapple, cut into chunks
Instructions
First, make the teriyaki marinade. Combine the first six ingredients in a sauce pan and place on medium heat.
While the mixture starts warming up, combine the cornstarch and cold water and stir to dissolve the cornstarch. This little slurry is what will thicken your teriyaki.
When the sauce in the pan is warm, add the slurry and whisk to combine. Continue cooking over medium heat until the sauce is as thick as you like. This portion will be used to marinate the tofu, so it doesn’t need to be super thick.
While the sauce is doing its thing, cube the tofu. I like to keep the block together, cutting in even proportions and then turning the whole block before cutting in the next direction. When you’ve cubed the whole thing, place the tofu into a glass container to marinade for a while, at least 30 minutes or more if you can.
When the tofu has marinated, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and cover a baking sheet with foil. (You can do this without the foil, of course, but it makes cleanup impossibly easy.) Spread the tofu cubes out across the baking sheet, and top with any remaining marinade.
Place in the oven for 20-40 minutes, depending how brown you like it.
While the tofu is cooking, prepare the rest of the ingredients. To make things extra saucy (and to be able to stir-fry without oil), I made another batch of the teriyaki sauce to cook the rest of the ingredients in. This was perfect because nothing really needed to be cooked, just heated up. You can make the second batch of sauce right in the wok or pan you will use to stir-fry. Easy!
When the sauce is done, add the snow peas:
And then the pineapple:
Let everything cook for about 7 or 8 minutes, until the snow peas turn bright green and the pineapple gets nicely warm and juicy.
When the tofu is finished, transfer it from the baking sheet to the wok with the rest of the ingredients. Top with crushed red pepper if you like it spicy like we do!
Serve over brown rice and enjoy. :)
